The Italian woman

Identification

Published titles

English: The Italian woman; Woman with a black bow; Italian girl.
French: La Brune.

Date

The Metropolitan Museum dates the canvas c. 1918–19 and gives 102.6 × 67 cm, which matches this file. Klein and Wayne date it 1917; MR dates it 1918. Pubhist records the same dimensions and the chain Zborowski, Bradly, Galerie Georges Petit, Chester Dale.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

102.6 × 67 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right.

Present location

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 56.4). Gift of the Chester Dale Collection, 1956.

Catalogue numbers

Legal note on MR: This investigation has not had access to MR’s catalogue raisonné; all research here is based on open sources, publications and exhibitions. By no means has that catalogue been copied at any point. Modigliani Project and Modigliani Initiative are marked YES when the work is published or otherwise recorded by those projects, even if no catalogue number is assigned; otherwise the field is marked ?.

Provenance

1. Léopold Zborowski, Paris.
2. Bradly Collection, Paris.
3. Galerie Georges Petit, Paris (1930–31).
4. Chester Dale, New York (acquired 1931).
5. Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 56.4), gift of the Chester Dale Collection, 1956.

The sequence follows the published museum, sale, and catalogue record in this investigation. Gaps and uncertain transfers are marked as such.

Selected bibliography

Book-length publications are marked with a footnote giving a full citation. Exhibition catalogues appear in both this list and the exhibition list when this investigation recorded them in both places. Where this investigation listed a long run of secondary mentions, only the principal catalogues and museum or sale references are retained here.

• Arthur Pfannstiel, 1956, no. 297, dated 1918.¹
• Ambrogio Ceroni, 1958, no. 110.²
• Charles Sterling and Margaretta Salinger, Metropolitan catalogue, vol. 3, 1967, pp. 241–42.³
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 336, dated 1918–19.⁴
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 268 (erroneously located at the National Gallery of Art, Washington).⁵
• Christian Parisot, 1991, no. 23/1918.⁶
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 281.⁷
• Kenneth Wayne, 2002, no. 20, dated 1917.⁸
• King et al., The Burlington Magazine 160 (May 2018), pp. 394–399.⁹

Exhibitions

• Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 1930, no. 52.
• New York, Demotte, 1931, no. 20.
• Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1933, no. 76.
• Basel, Kunsthalle, 1934, no. 66.
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chester Dale Collection, 1943.
• Brussels, Exposition universelle, 1958, no. 226.
• New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries, 1970–71, no. 394.
• Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 71.
• Tokyo and Nagoya, 1985, no. 92.
• Martigny, 1990, no. 93.
• Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Ibaraki, 1992–93, no. 36.
• Lausanne, 1994, no. 16.
• Lugano, 1999, no. 56.
• Buffalo, Fort Worth and Los Angeles, 2002–03, no. 20.
• New York, Toronto and Washington, 2004–05.
• London, Royal Academy, 2006, no. 22.
• London, Tate Modern, 2017–18.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 76, as The young Italian, described there as “mediocre,” Dale Collection, provenance Bradly 1931 > Georges Petit.

Corner holes are present and have been filled.

A black bow in the hair is easily missed in reproduction; this investigation publishes a detail.

MR and Decrooq have related the portrait, painted in Nice, to male pendants including Le Niçois (stolen during the Second World War) and a seated man with an orange ground.

The canvas was examined in the Modigliani technical research study published in The Burlington Magazine 160 (May 2018), pp. 394–399. The published extract describes a limited, consistent palette and a thin paint layer associated with the southern French period. Pigments published for this canvas: chrome yellow; lead and zinc white; vermilion; ochre; organic red lake; bone black; viridian.

This investigation marked several fields as still being checked. The facts above are those already published; where sources disagree, both readings are given.